a technology interest group for the library professionals in Maricopa County, AZ

Adapting to the Change to Virtual Community, or how a library got 54 blog comments on the new Harry Potter book that’s not even coming out for over 4 months!

I enjoy reading the comments of Jenny Levine in her blog The Shifted Librarian. Here I’ve taken her latest post completely out of context to bring you a few ideas of how libraries are creating conversations with their communities, allowing patrons to contribute their library’s local history knowledge, featuring local leaders on READ posters, creating a NetFlix style program for users who can’t or don’t have time to come in to the library, providing readers advisory services on their website and more. She highlights some of the ways that new technologies are being used right now by libraries across the country to connect libraries and communities.

Western Springs History – 4620 Grand – when libraries normally provide local history online, it’s just what the librarians know about the community; here, we see the community also contributing (collaborating) complementary knowledge that the librarians wouldn’t otherwise be able to provide

Lansing Public Library’s READ Posters – note how just posting some pictures of local community leaders helps get the Library out into the community, via the newspaper, posters in the schools, etc.; it helps humanize the Library, especially online

Homer Township Public Library District’s Flickr Pictures – note how the pictures of the Bookmobile, Crazy Hat Days help show the vibrancy that happens in the Library and shows the community using their services (and smiling about it, too!); notice, too, how they redisplay current pictures on their home page automatically, as well as headlines from their blog; they load the pictures once and then reuse them on their website without any additional staff time

Kansas City Public Library Subject Guides – note how they’ve made it easy to find everything about a topic in one place (expertise), rather than forcing users to go to the catalog to find books on the topic, guessing at which databases to use for that topic, going to the calendar to find events on that topic, etc.